1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a Machine-To-Machine (M2M) communication system, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for supporting an application providing a service only for a predetermined period of time in an M2M communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Research is currently being conducted on a Machine-To-Machine (M2M) communication service that supports machine-to-machine data communication in a case in which there is little or no direct human interaction. The M2M communication service decreases the cost of device management by automation and communication. Specifically, the M2M communication service is a technology applicable to health care, home automation, smart metering, and fleet management of vehicles and articles mounted on the vehicles.
In the M2M communication system, a system designer may be required to consider a device that transmits/receives data for a limited period of time unlike a Subscriber Station (SS) of a general communication system. For example, a smart metering device may transmit metered values to a smart meter server at fixed periods, for example, once a month, or may receive metering information from the smart meter server once a day. As another example, a healthcare device may receive up-to-date healthcare information from a healthcare server once a day.
As described above, the M2M communication system may transmit or receive data for a predetermined period of time depending on the purpose and use of a subscriber station. That is, because data related to a service subscribed by the subscriber station should be accessed only for a predetermined period of time, the subscriber station may be registered in the network only for the predetermined period of time or may use the network resources only for the predetermined period of time. In order to allow an access only for the predetermined period of time, a network registration/deregistration process and a Dynamic Service Addition (DSA)/Dynamic Service Deletion (DSD) process is frequently performed for the predetermined period of time. What is thus required is a scheme for performing efficient communication to overcome the above problem.